


First, Catch the Rabbit

by kingfisherBlues



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Background Romance, Family Dynamics, Futility of Supernatural Characters, Gen, I ascribe to Crowley taking all the genders and Aziraphale having none of them., The American still doesn't know most English things., Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-13 00:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20165041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingfisherBlues/pseuds/kingfisherBlues
Summary: For eleven years, they would care for and nurture one small (somewhat) mortal boy so that he may rise to his destiny of destroying the world. Or saving the world. Or leaving the world well enough alone, so that everyone who lived on it could go about their own lives of drinking wine and sharing secrets under stars, perfectly content that everything was exactly as it should be.Eleven years was a pittance compared to the thousands they had already lived.It would be a perfectly easy task. Wouldn't it?





	1. Third, Lay It To The Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threehornedsoul (Derppool)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derppool/gifts).

> The television show did inspire me to take up writing again, but this is only a book story.
> 
> Rated T for eventual language.

### 1.

Once the plan was in place, it was better to get on with it instead of fiddling until it was The Plan proper. Nanny Ashtoreth had to rely on instinct as much as learning in this situation, after all. It was expected of caregivers and motherly types, never mind however many centuries she had seen humans blossom and wither throughout stages upon stages of their lives, all while taking mental notes that equalled libraries to make a bibliophile weep. If one was to take care of babies, one had to be able to just _ sense _ things. Which was odd. Like some kind of psychic that believed in their powers more than their vastly superior charlatan skillset, but. Here she was. Being sensible and giving all sorts of care. 

The whole business had sounded vaguely more romantic than just knowing when a nappie was wet or when a gut grumble was gas that should be burped out, but then, things usually were more romantic at that distance. Romanticism was to be expected when the reality of humans wasn’t doing its best to scream its head off at you because it was tired and couldn’t sleep, because someone (not them) just keeps _ screaming _ and you need to know how to stop it.

If only she _ could _ stop his screaming. 

Well, she could, but part of the plan was to be as neutrally evil as possible. Temporarily taking away a baby’s vocal cords for an hour was the sort of direct interference would be frowned upon, if not noticed by more parties than advisable, human or otherwise.

She had to be traditional. 

She _ hated _ to be traditional.

Traditionally and woefully, Nanny Ashtoreth was reduced to carrying the baby Antichrist in her arms, bouncing gently and soothingly patting his back, whispering the kind of nonsense she had heard for years from harried and strained caregivers. 

“There, there, angelbane, there, there,” she said, knowing exactly where there was.

He screamed in counterpoint. She shushed with endearments. He wailed. She arranged him higher on her chest so that he could scream into her shirt collar instead of her face. The sound worsened, but at least it was a vaguely lying down position. That was the end goal. Eventually, even Antichrist babies did have to take naps.

“Things’ll look better after a kip,” she told him, pitching her voice smooth as though to counteract his tired crying. “Don’t you feel it true?”

Baby Warlock only cried harder. He knew what she wanted, it felt like, and was being stubborn if only to keep her from her _ own _ cat nap on the divan. She had already taken off her jacket in anticipation and everything, ready to be slothful for an entire half hour or so before the child awoke again.

Her plans were proving to have been plotted in vain. Somewhat mortal babies had turned out to be just as exhausting as mortal ones.

“Should I take him?” said Mrs. Dowling from the doorway. Her brushings with motherhood were the sort that relied on having many people to watch a single child: heartfelt, but not worried in the least. She had other things in life to worry her.

“If’n you have the mind for it, mistress,” said Nanny Ashtoreth, changing her patting pattern to more of a long stroke. Baby Warlock breathed in a huge hiccupping gulp and grasped her shirt with both tiny fists, sick of his growing pains. “He's just having himself an upset. I suspect he’ll be getting a few more teeth soon enough.”

“Oh, it’s that, then.” Mrs. Dowling got close enough to follow Nanny’s trajectory around the nursery, peering at her son. “How can you tell? I only see the same two.”

“A nanny knows,” Nanny answered, with just a touch of that Scottish mysteriousness that seemed to delight the mother so much. The better the two could get along, the better her self-made assignment would go until the end of the world.

Warlock whimpered. He was done with screaming, she was hoping with all her probable heart, but he wasn’t sleeping yet.

“You seem to have a handle on him, at least,” said Mrs. Dowling, stopping in place. She smiled; it was the flashing one, rather than the plain pleasantness she showed to her husband's colleagues. “Is that more nanny magic?”

“Of a sort, perhaps,” she murmured. Was it magic to look at a child and know teeth were finally sprouting? She often knew strange and unpleasant things about humans. It was in her nature.

Nanny Ashtoreth sat carefully in the droll rocking chair - it looked antique but was annoyingly brand new - Warlock still propped against her chest. He sobbed and hiccupped in turn, a tiny human worn out from the work of sharing its misery with the world.

Mrs. Dowling watched. Despite her earlier question, she did not seem inclined to hold him.

“Tad is expecting another visitor,” she said, head tilted to take in the view. “They should stay downstairs, but I'll tell them to keep quiet anyway. For the baby.”

“Thank you, mistress,” said Nanny Ashtoreth. She crossed her legs at the knee and used one sensibly low heel to rock the chair to an internal beat. Warlock's grumblings petered down to nearly tolerable, his heart slowing to match the rhythm.

“Though you can tell them if they're too loud,” Mrs. Dowling added, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I don't think this newest sycophant is so important that they can't stand a little yelling to shut up.”

“Thank you,” Nanny said again, hiding her smile.

“Did you ever have kids?” 

Still rocking, Nanny Ashtoreth raised her eyebrows in question. Mrs. Dowling had seen the completely fabricated resume and spoken with all of the fake contacts herself, though over the phone. One of them (Nanny in a different voice) had let slip that she was childless.

“Sorry,” said Mrs. Dowling, waving her hands in front of her as though to get rid of the words. “Sorry, I know, it's just- it's just that you seem so _ good _ with him.”

Nanny Ashtoreth could feel tears on her collar and snot on her shirt, as Warlock shuddered through determination to continue his directionless anger. It seemed sleep was winning instead. It was nothing new, no matter how many years go by.

“I’ve had all the children I could ever want,” she said, letting the vowels and consonants slip together in a direct counterpoint to Mrs. Dowling’s straightforward American speech. “Taking care of bairns like this one.”

Mrs. Dowling bit at her lip, looking more at Warlock than Nanny. 

She was thinking that wanting children was a goal that Women should have. That Women should desire. It was capital, the way that Mrs. Dowling often thought it, especially when Warlock was crying and screaming in that manner that young children without adult-approved communication skills often had. Yet every time the thought crossed her sun-streaked mind, she didn't quite believe it.

Nanny Ashtoreth shifted lower in her seat. Warlock finally took the hint and began the subtle process of letting go of his misery of five minutes before. 

“I don't actually want to go talk to anyone,” Mrs. Dowling said with a wrinkling of her nose. “Could I take a nap in here, too? I promise to be quieter.”

“That wouldn't be too difficult,” said Nanny Ashtoreth, remembering last minute to smile instead of wink at the joke. Her darkly tinted glasses would have hid it otherwise. 

Mrs. Dowling gave a low chuckle in reply.

“Guess not, huh. I never thought that babies would be so _ loud_.”

Nanny hummed, a neutral prompting. Warlock patted her sternum and sniffled.

“Well, of course, everybody says that they’re loud,” she said, sitting on a nearby hassock. It didn't match the rocking chair exactly in a deliberately annoying fashion. “It just sounds different, when they’re, you know. Actually in front of you.”

“Aye, you’ve the right of that.” Nanny Ashtoreth was concentrating more on the settling Warlock than the doubtful Mrs. Dowling, but her senses were perking up. If she were a lesser demon, she wouldn’t be sitting in this chair with the Antichrist falling asleep on her chest, but she would be pitifully excited about this chance for a singular temptation.

But she wasn’t a lesser demon, and mostly she wanted a nap. Taking care of babies was draining, even to a demon.

“Not that I don’t enjoy it! Most of it,” said Mrs. Dowling on her internal train of thought, smoothing her skirt over her knees. She wore skirts on days where she had to receive guests alongside Mr. Dowling, which was another thing in her mental category of What Women Should Desire. (The accompanying heels were thought of only in irritation.)

Her eyes flickered to her son fitfully as she asked, “Does it get easier, with more children?”

Nanny shifted again, the better to accommodate the baby. “Which part, mistress?”

Mrs. Dowling looked at Warlock, longing on her face. Another human might look at it and recognize it as the longing of a mother to care for their children. Nanny Ashtoreth recognized it as the longing to care for their child at all.

“Knowing what to do,” Mrs. Dowling said aloud, soft and close, her hands tucked under her knees like a schoolgirl. She averted her gaze from Nanny with distant envy, held locked inside her heart. “Knowing if you're doing _ anything _ right.”

Warlock was near fully asleep, tear tacky face stuck to Nanny's blouse. She leaned a cheek briefly against his head; he grumbled and snuggled closer.

She could see the garden from the nursery windows, overabundant with flora, likely to be riddled with fauna. (Though she never seemed to notice them when she went walking there, her mind on other things.) If it wasn't for what _ he _ would say, Nanny Ashtoreth would love to present a little mischief, ripe for the taking, but that wasn't part of the planned mission.

She had to be bloody _ traditional_.

“I wouldn't call it easy,” she answered Mrs. Dowling, smoothing Warlock's hair away from his sweaty brow. “But I do what I can. There are always quiet moments to appreciate, after all is said and done.”

Mrs. Dowling bit at her lip again, contemplating fondness as she watched her son sleep on Nanny's chest. Her lipstick would have to be renewed at this rate.

She met Nanny's gaze behind the glasses.

“I'm glad you're here,” she said.

Nanny Ashtoreth, shocked more by the sincerity than the words, gathered herself together and replied, “This is where you need me to be, mistress.”

“That's why I'm glad,” said Mrs. Dowling. “I don't know what I would have… I'm an only child, you know.”

Nanny Ashtoreth nodded. She had never not known.

“And my own mom is so far away, and I don't even…” To further Nanny's shock, tears began to brim at the corners of Mrs. Dowling's eyes. She blinked them back rapidly, looking up at the ceiling to keep the pesky salted water from ruining her attire further. 

“I don't even know what I'm supposed to be _ doing_,” she said, cracked raw with bewilderment. She was a Woman, which meant (in her mind) that she wasn't allowed to be ambivalent or unsure about being a Mother. Yet the ambivalence persisted anyway, despite her best mental gymnastics to cast it out. 

“Firstborns are tricky, dearie. No amount of preparation seems enough at times like these,” said Nanny Ashtoreth, hoping to be appropriately soothing, afraid that panic showed instead. She didn't usually have to _ stay _when humans has a crisis. She would have been over the hill and well down the lane by the time they had figured out a crisis was happening.

“I'm sorry,” Mrs. Dowling sniffed. “I shouldn't be crying like this. I'll stop, I promise.”

Perhaps in defiance, the salt water persisted, spilling down Mrs. Dowling's cheeks. She blotted at the tears with the back of her wrists, still so contentious about the trappings of a public life.

“Oh, poor dear,” murmured Nanny Ashtoreth, thinking rapidly. She had been prepared to be caregiver to Warlock, but this was something else.

It was tricky, with a slumbering baby on her, but Nanny wriggled low enough in her chair so that she could reach her skirt pocket. She tugged out a handkerchief - white linen, as was proper, with tiny initials embroidered on one corner in red flowing script - and held it out to her human employer.

Who stared at it, uncomprehending.

“For your eyes, dearie,” said Nanny Ashtoreth. “It never hurts to have a good cry, but we can't go about leaving ourselves woebegone for it.”

Mrs. Dowling took the handkerchief and patted at her face, makeup smutching the white. She thought to glance at Warlock a moment later, who was fully slumbering in his nap now, the snot and tears from his own crying miraculously gone. She didn't seem to notice that it was also gone from Nanny's shirt.

Nanny could tell that the woman wanted to ask if she was a bad Mother. It ached on her tongue, but it would be just as painful to say. And Nanny could not give an answer that would soothe. She knew too many unpleasant parts of humanity to dress it up politely.

“Why don't I settle the babe in his crib,” Nanny Ashtoreth suggested before Mrs. Dowling could give in to that ache, “and put the kettle on?”

“The kettle?”

“For tea, and perhaps a chat.” Her nap, regretfully, could wait.

“Oh, right. Yes. Yeah, that would be nice,” she agreed, giving her face a final cursory brushing. She sniffed hard and shook out her hands in an effort at collection. She even tried an experimental smile, as she was used to doing when chasing away hard emotions. Which, as a diplomat's wife, meant anything other than having the pleasure of someone's acquaintance.

Nanny Ashtoreth would have loved to introduce this woman to the Tree, if only so she would have had a choice for once in her life that was sincerely her own. 

Maybe she still could, metaphorically. If she was delicate about it, literally.

She would just have to be clever. That shouldn't be too difficult for a being of her ageless and cunning skill.

Mrs. Dowling stood, settling her shoulders.

Nanny Ashtoreth realized that she was nearly horizontal in the rocking chair, having crept lower and lower in her seat so as not to disturb the sleeping Warlock.

“Oh, bother,” she said in lieu of a proper swear.

“Need a hand?” asked Mrs. Dowling.

“No, I’ll just- hang on,” grumbled Nanny, carefully inching herself up, hovering a hand over Warlock’s back in case he decided to fuss or throw himself out of her arms. He had learned a few weeks ago that, if he _ did _ deliberately tumble out of her grip, she would catch him. And of course, he found that delightful as only a small human could.

Nanny Ashtoreth could have also found it delightfully hilarious, except _ she _was the one expected to catch him. 

But Warlock didn’t stir, even when Mrs. Dowling slipped the crib wall down with a clack and Nanny laid him on the cot. He was quite peaceful as he slept. It would have been difficult to remember his nap-time tantrums in that moment, if Nanny wasn't who she was, which was a being who very much knew that Warlock was the Antichrist and would end all of their lives - human and occult and ethereal - very, very, _ very _ soon.

His mother didn't know that. She looked on him with the pointed love of someone trying very hard to emulate a kindness never shown to them. Nanny couldn’t sense love - not like _ he _ could, the braggart - but she had been around for a while. She knew what it looked like when someone looked at another and found their own care lacking. 

Well. It was only a plan, not even _ The _Plan. What could it hurt?

“Let's get ourselves a cuppa while the peace lasts,” said Nanny Ashtoreth, nudging Mrs. Dowling's shoulder. And if they had a heart-to-heart in the meantime, she was the nanny. She could stand to have a listen, with maybe a few interesting tidbits to add.

Nothing pointed. Just an apple, held up, ripe for the taking.

“Yes, please,” Mrs. Dowling whispered. She followed Nanny out of the nursery, still clutching the properly linen handkerchief, about to be shown what it meant to have someone care for them.

### 2.

As far as ways to whittle away at time went, this was as good a time to whittle as any. The agreed plan was to have an agent on the inside and the outside, and he had gotten the out. Brother Francis didn’t mind. Part of gardening, as far as he was concerned, was more feeling than anything, and the plants felt delightful. He had been at the original Garden, after all, and under his eye, these faint echoes of that distant ancestor grew with the same amount of love and benevolence. They couldn’t help it. He walked among their boughs and whispers every day, telling them - truthfully - just how beautiful they were.

The plants responded in kind, which was immensely helpful on the occasions where the Antichrist was lost somewhere in the garden. The boy had yet to come into his power properly, but had graduated to running around wildly in private games of adventure, diving headfirst into the undergrowth and waving about swords made of sticks and imagination. 

He especially delighted in whacking at trees with the remnants of their past. Brother Francis had tried to discourage him from this, as it distressed the trees unnecessarily, but the boy wasn’t very good at listening just yet. 

Brother Francis could _ make _ him listen, of course, but that kind of influence tended to do poorly on human vessels. Even if they were human vessels for terrible, world-ending occult forces. It would be far too much trouble and cut severely into his precious reading time.

The kudzu that made up Brother Francis’ current perch rustled. Out of sight, a distinctive child’s wail rose over the garden.

Brother Francis sighed to himself, set down his book next to his favourite reading spot beneath some rhododendrons, and followed where the plants were pointing.

He found the Antichrist at the foot of a tree that had cracked a nearby low wall with sudden growth, clutching at his knee. Blood welled from broken skin as he cried the great tears of youth, displaying more artistry than sorrow.

“B-Brother Francis,” he sobbed. “I fell off the tree.”

“There, there, young master Warlock,” said Brother Francis, crouching with care towards the old knees that his current seeming had. “Let's take a look, then.”

It wasn’t terrible, as far as wounds go, but the boy was still barely a blossom by most standards. He had no way of knowing what manner of illness and death might occur from minor injuries, and so was free to imagine all of them, his growing mind working away busily to redouble his tears.

“I’m gonna catch a sick and die,” Warlock declared, wiping his face on his dirty sleeve. “Th- there’s bugs and germs and vermin in the garden.”

Brother Francis pulled out a tiny cross kit from his pocket, one that had not been there a moment ago. He never remembered to leave it under the assumption that of course, the boy would get hurt again somehow. It was inevitable, as was Brother kneeling to assess and assuage any worries. It was what he would do for all of His creatures. Most of the time. Especially to a creature that needed to be shown benevolence as a specific and pointed example in order to accomplish a balancing role in their life. 

“Now,” he asked, opening a small sanitizing towelette. “Who went and told you such a thing about my garden?”

“Nanny Ashtoreth did,” the boy answered, watching as Brother Francis wiped clean his already clean hands (it being good to set an example). He sniffled. “She said the world is riddled with disease and I could catch a sick at any time and die.”

“Of course she did,” Brother Francis murmured. It sounded like _ her _ well enough, for all that she walked with him in the green just fine. “And I’ll suppose she neglected to mention all the beautiful things in the garden as well, did she?”

“Nanny hates the garden,” Warlock said plainly, as though it was a false fact everyone knew. He puzzled over the tiny, well-regimented kit, knee and tears momentarily forgotten. “What are you doing?”

“There are a tremendous amount of creatures in the world, young master,” said Brother Francis, now taking out an alcohol swab. “Many of which must be respected, and even more so that can't be seen by mortal eye.”

“Germs,” the boy said with a grave nod.

“Aye, germs is one,” he allowed. “Blood platelets are another, as what are already a part of you. We’ll need to give them a clean surface so they can get to healing you up. This will sting, now.”

Warlock hunched away, suspicious somewhat-mortal eyes narrowing with theatrical distrust.

“It already hurts!”

“We must sanitize the wound,” explained Brother Francis, settling back in his seat. “It stings because your skin doesn't like to be open. But we'll wipe it clean and cover it with a plaster, and then we can let it heal in peace.”

“_Warlock! _” a different voice bellowed, far off and closer to the residence proper. 

Warlock hunched towards the gardener, fear flashing freely across his features.

“The old apple tree, is it?” said Brother Francis, deliberately cheerful. He didn’t like how often that the young Antichrist was more likely to be frightened of his mortal father. The man had never struck Warlock or treated him harshly - Nanny would never allow that - but there was distant fear regardless. It was the fear one held of an unknown factor; Mr. Dowling was rarely at the residence. 

“What?” said the boy, scrunching his nose.

“You’re the apple, falling far from the tree. Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway,” explained Brother, squinting to see through the numerous botanicals in the way. They obliged him by moving just enough to give a view of Mr. Dowling - dressed down in shirtsleeves and his home tie - wandering the trimmed lawn that the mortal gardeners fought to maintain constantly in defiance of Brother Francis’s influence. 

“_Warlock! _”

“What’s he upset about, then? This’ll sting.”

“He’s - oh!” The boy winced as Brother Francis swabbed clean the clotting cut, but with a new upset to consider, he braved it well. “I was playing tag with him and ran over here and he don’t like it when I run over here.”

“Why not?” 

“Daddy don’t like mud on his shoes.”

“Where else would the mud go? His shirt?” asked Brother Francis with a wink, pulling out a selection of plasters. Warlock giggled, as intended, and picked out a plaster with dinosaurs on it. They didn’t usually come in that large square size, but Brother Francis didn’t know that.

He got the boy plastered and tidied up, pulling a large and roughly sewn handkerchief from another voluminous pocket - blue and green plaid, just old enough to be soft, as was proper - in order to dust the remaining dirt from Warlock’s legs and face. Warlock bore it with minimal complaining. He was used to similar treatment from most of the adults in his life, as the boy was near perpetually besmirched, as far as Brother Francis had seen. 

“_Warlock! _” came the bellow, though with a slightly desperate edge at this point.

Brother Francis stood with the appropriate grumblings and, taking Warlock’s hand, guided him around the low wall and down some steps that might have been pretty once upon a time, but were now covered in far more impressive creeping ivy and moss. He couldn’t understand why Mr. Dowling didn’t like this part of the garden. Everything _ flourished _ here.

“Warlock,” called Mr. Dowling, hurrying over as soon as Brother Francis and the boy emerged from the green. “I told you, don’t run off like that!”

“You were supposed to catch me,” Warlock said. He stood half behind the gardener, poised ready to run again if the situation called for it.

“Daddy can’t follow you over there, sport, it’s too… dangerous.” Mr. Dowling looked at Brother Francis with a frown. “What are you doing here? Isn’t it your day off?”

“It’s _ Nanny’s _ day off, daddy!” cried the Antichrist, hanging from Brother Francis’s hand in his agitation. “I got hurt and Brother Francis gave me a plaster and I got plates in me!”

“Platelets,” Brother Francis corrected gently, bearing his child’s weight. “They’re in your blood.”

“Blood plates!”

“You got hurt?” Mr. Dowling frowned. “Let me see.”

Warlock braced himself against Brother Francis and stuck out the small clean knee, a bright spot against the smudging he bore elsewhere. Mr. Dowling crouched to examine it, briefly encircling Warlock’s calf with one large hand. 

“Hmm. You were doing something foolish, I expect?” said Mr. Dowling. Even crouched, he was taller than his son, young as he still was.

“No,” Warlock mumbled, chin pressed against his chest.

“Then what _ were _ you doing?”

Warlock shrugged and tugged his leg free. He stood near fully behind Brother Francis now, kicking idly at the grass.

“Well,” said Mr. Dowling, standing back up. He met Brother Francis’s gaze squarely, with the level-eyed intent of one used to backing lesser Men down through subtle threat of force alone. “Thank you, Mr. Francis, for caring for him. It’s _ commendable _ that a person such as yourself would be so kind as to _ assist _ my young son in his time of need -”

“Not a word of worry to it, Master Dowling,” interrupted brother Francis, giving a smile in lieu of impatience for the man’s odd way of talking. Behind him, Warlock began sneaking away in a beeline towards a bird bath that stood freely on the lawn. It had suddenly acquired a full complement of birds.

“Er. I beg your pardon?”

“Not a word of worry to it.”

“Hmm.” Mr. Dowling looked casually puzzled. He had a hard time with the accents of the land.

“You’re welcome,” said Brother Francis, being sure to pronounce each syllable precisely.

“Ah, yes. Thanks, thank you.”

Warlock approached the bird bath ever more slowly, fascinated by a beautifully plump starling. A small grey dog rounded the corner of the residence, saw the boy, and began a similar creep. It was odd, as Rover usually went with Nanny Ashtoreth on her free days, but who was Brother Francis to know her every movement? It’s not as though they were friends. They only planned together. And sometimes walked.

“How _ did _ he get hurt?” Mr. Dowling asked, eyes on Brother Francis. He was trying to lock gazes in an attempt at intimidation. He thought himself a Man, which meant (to him) he needed to constantly vie for position in social situations. It's what Men did in order to get the upper hand before someone else tried to intimidate them in turn, what Men had been doing since the dawn of time. It had never occurred to him to question such a thought, just as it never occurred why he found the perpetually smiling and ruddy-with-good-cheer Brother Francis unsettling. Brother Francis, to his thinking, was too ugly to be a _ certain _ kind of man, and too simply kind to be a different sort of certain. He considered the gardener to be ‘odd, but harmless’.

Which, despite the unspoken insult, was the goal. It didn't mean that Brother had to like it.

“Climbed a tree and fell off it as a matter of course,” Brother Francis said, looking up at the beautiful sky and clasping his hands behind his back. “Not much to it. He didn’t get very high, as far as the tree is concerned.”

“Hmmm.” He blinked, his only admission of discomfort. “Did _ you _ clean his knee?”

“Of course, Master Dowling.”

“With what?”

Brother Francis tapped a pocket of his mackintosh. “I’ve a cross kit, as a matter of fact. Full of useful little bobs and bits, swabs and the like.”

“Oh, yes. Good.” Mr. Dowling was still trying to decipher through the words while staring down the gardener. It would have been easier if Brother was inclined to play along. “Did you learn how to do this first aid somewhere?”

“Every gardener must know how best to care for creatures of all sorts, sir,” said Brother Francis dutifully. “Are you going to do anything about the dog?”

“What?” Mr. Dowling looked around, spotted Rover, and yelled, “Hey!”

Warlock flinched, thinking the shout was directed at him, then saw the dog. He ran back to the adults, screeching with abandon, the dog chasing him merrily. He did not care for Nanny’s little Rover. He didn’t care for any dogs, really, which was difficult to place against a teaching of benevolence of all living things, but Rover wasn’t exactly a normal dog. Brother Francis was unsure if he could press the issue on that front, as he wasn’t certain if Rover was technically living.

Once he got close enough, the boy jumped at Mr. Dowling, arms upraised to be caught. Mr. Dowling fetched him up in a high carry, grimacing at the staining of his previously immaculate white shirt.

“Go away!” Warlock shouted at Rover, nearly up on his father’s shoulders in an attempt at distance.

“Warlock, you gotta stop squirming-”

“Go away go away go _ away_!”

“Warlock-”

The boy, still scrabbling for the high ground, overbalanced and began to fall. Mr. Dowling made an attempt to catch him but missed, his panic palpable at the sudden lapse in his Fatherly Duties.

Brother Francis caught the boy instead. Firmly by the waist, so that he couldn’t slip, but unfortunately upside down.

Warlock flailed his legs, bringing further risk into the situation.

“Away!” he shouted.

“Master Dowling, if you would.” Brother Francis held the child out to his father. The man purpled with embarrassment that was quickly resolving itself into anger, that being an easier emotion to deal with in his mind. He wasn’t rough as he grabbed up Warlock to swing him the right way around, but it was close.

“Stop screaming,” he said curtly to the boy, and then to the dog, “Get on out of here!”

Rover sat on the grass, taking in the excitement with a devilish doggy grin and wagging tail.

Warlock continued to wail. He seemed little assured in his father’s arms.

Brother Francis sighed. Mr. Dowling thought that being a Man meant intimidating people into compliance, but one could not intimidate a child out of fear. It usually just added to it.

“Please go find your mistress,” he said to Rover. “Before I tell her _ you _ were out here without her leave.”

Rover considered this. He did not like being told on.

“She’ll be most displeased to have her afternoon interrupted,” Brother added with the firm conviction of a fellow who knew exactly what that displeasure would entail. The two might not be friends, not really - it wasn’t exactly allowed - but he had her measure after a few thousand years. She hated interruptions to a quiet evening, and her hatred usually led to roasting of a less delicious variety. 

The dog decided. He did bare his teeth at Brother Francis, but got up and trotted off, head lifted with disdain. Rover swung by the birdbath in an attempt at casual rebellion, but the starlings there were too many to be bullied. They took flight in a dive bomb squad to harass Rover on his way, chasing him back across the lawn at a fast clip.

Mr. Dowling watched all of this with bafflement, still holding Warlock on his hip.

“How did you-” 

“There, the dog is gone,” said Brother Francis, patting Warlock’s back, winking at Mr. Dowling so that he would pay attention to the hint. “And, young master, should he bother you again, be sure to tell him _ firmly _ that you’ll get Nanny Ashtoreth if he doesn’t behave.”

Warlock sniffled and rubbed his face dry on his father’s shirt. Mr. Dowling gritted his teeth.

“O-ho-kay,” he wobbled, bottom lip out in a firm pout.

“You were fine,” added his father, wanting to be part of the conversation. “I got you.”

“You dropped me!”

“Well, you were wiggling too much,” Mr. Dowling said irritably. 

Warlock grumbled under his breath and buried his face on his father’s shoulder.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” the boy muttered, half muffled by fine and soiled cloth.

“Better keep it that way,” said his father, sharp as a nettle.

Sharpness was better than the miasma that roiled in his mind, namely that he didn’t expect this Fatherhood business to be quite so tricky. His son was loud and rough and effusive in all of his emotions. Mr. Dowling, who had trimmed down his own internal worries to a negligible mountain of dust shoved under a rug, didn’t know how to cope. His oddly starched mind - full of what it meant to be a Man - didn’t include how to protect someone from their own fears. He could barely deal with ignoring that tiny mountain, let alone deal with the mountain of someone he loved.

It was disheartening, to say the least, to know such a human thing about the man. Even when he was home, he was far more involved with making sure that people knew who was in control, rather than for whom he cared.

If only he could give the mortal something by which to improve himself. But he was only the gardener and not supposed to interfere. Although, he knew, there was usually some wiggle room, especially for good intentions. No one could deny good intentions.

Brother Francis tried an encouraging smile, letting his sincere belief in human’s ability to change for the better shine through. 

Mr. Dowling looked away, known discomfort stuffed down beneath the rug of his soul.

“We've been outside long enough,” he told Warlock, setting him on the ground. “Let's go get cleaned up.”

“I'm _ already _ clean!”

“Not clean enough, you aren't,” he rumbled.

Warlock stuck out his tongue, then threw his arms around Brother Francis’ legs.

“Thank you for the plaster, Brother Francis,” he said to the mackintosh.

“Oh, you're quite welcome, young master Warlock,” he replied, touched. It was a good sign that Warlock had thought to give thanks unprompted. It could be that his influence was working.

Warlock ran off to the residence. Mr. Dowling lingered behind. His tongue was tied up with suspicion, pretty words trembling to be released with their skittering threats beneath. He was trying to decide how best to say them.

“That one is quite the sprite,” commented Brother Francis before the man could say anything. The less he had to deal with the father, the better. Sly asides would only sour this otherwise pleasant time of a mission.

“Yeah, he’s a real- he’s a tyke,” he chuckled, waving a nebulous gesture to encompass the house. 

Brother Francis’ heart metaphorically stopped, before he remembered that Americans used that word differently than he had learned it. They said everything differently than how he had learned it, it felt like, and usually just to be contrary. 

Mr. Dowling scuffed lightly at the ground with one sharp-edged shoe.

“It’s a good thing you were there for him,” he lied, putting on the booming boisterousness that had other workers smiling politely at him, but didn’t do a thing for Brother Francis. “Who knows what could have happened!”

He looked on Brother Francis with thinly veiled jealousy and unease. It was strange, to be an ethereal being that could see down to the truth of a person. It made him want to give the man something to protect himself from his own fears, but that wasn’t part of the plan.

Well. It wasn’t the agreed plan. But he’d hardly be an angel if he didn’t at least try something. The man had so few shields of his own, and all of them were largely ineffective. Maybe he needed to see what it meant to truly aid another, as opposed to talking around them.

Maybe something heartfelt, as a good example. Something to _ inspire_.

“I tell you true, Master Dowling,” he said with more of his usual cadence of hope, bowing from the waist. “The young master will never come to harm while in my garden.”

“That’s a noble thing to promise,” Mr. Dowling, halfway between boisterous and confused.

“It’s no promise. ‘Tis as truth,” said Brother Francis. He may have to sweet-talk some of the more reluctant plants into agreeing, but they would come around to it, especially if he could get Warlock to stop pulling up growing green willy-nilly. Eventually. If only the Antichrist would _ listen _ to him, but there were years to go yet for the proper heavenly influence.

“Hmm. Yes,” was the mild response, with a final dusting of his hands, before Mr. Dowling waved and turned to go back into the house, the idea of care pressed on his shirt with small, dirty hand prints.


	2. Second, Make a Pudding

### 3.

It took only a few weeks to be hired as a tutor to young Warlock, but it felt like a massive change to Mx. Harrison. They had to go through the motions of meeting the household again - at their own leisure, as no one thought to introduce the _ tutor _ to important people like the cook - and they didn’t have their own room this time. They were there nearly as an afterthought, as the general idea seemed to be that a son of a diplomat ought to have tutors, but the actual education was of less importance.

The entire process was a trial. A trial that Mx. Harrison would suffer. Loudly. On the occasions when they got to go back to their tutor-appropriate flat and drink wine by the bottle with their counterpart in this whole affair. Because they did have a _ job _ to do, in addition to the entire ‘influencing towards evil’ bit. It was galling, how no one seemed to care as much about it.

Well. No one but their counterpart. But that hardly counted. _ He _ was there as the sworn constant companion. Not friend. Not really enemy either, at this point, but definitely not friend. He had to care, because so did they.

At least the two didn’t have to care together much at the residence. Mx. Harrison swanned in as Mr. Cortese bustled out, deliberately not looking at each other with the pointed furtiveness of past schoolmates avoiding each other at the grocer’s. It was like a game, how much the two could pretend not to be aware of the other. Their previous jobs hadn’t allowed for such a thing, being in different spheres. 

This time around, Mx. Harrison hadn’t expected it to be so much clandestine _ fun_. (Not that they would ever, ever tell him.) 

The rare occasions that the two tutored side by side tended to have more enthusiastic debating than perhaps what was warranted, but they were play-acting as scholars. Nobody fought more than scholars, except maybe unhappy married couples.

As was evidenced after a few more weeks of working for the diplomats. 

For humans, the two could get startlingly loud.

It hadn’t been as prominent before the nanny and the gardener had left. Those matrimonial campaigns had been waged in frost and scorn, with whispered negations when the Antichrist was around. It was hard to tell if anything significant had changed in the household, or if the couple was finding themselves unhappy now that their mutual obligation was in school. Mx. Harrison could have found out, of course, but that wasn’t part of the job description, mortal or infernal or otherwise. 

Whatever they were arguing about, it was upsetting the tutoring. Mx. Harrison stood to shut the door to the former nursery. It had been commandeered as a schoolroom nearly right after the former nanny had left, they were cross to see. Warlock needed a space to play inside on rainy days. At this rate, he would be sliding down the bannisters and getting everyone upset with the mundane chaos, instead of doing something truly hellishly nasty in private to be unleashed upon the world.

“I can still hear them,” Warlock complained, head down as he worked on his maths primer. He was disconcertingly interested in maths, for all he was a child of seven or so.

“Shall I play music?” suggested Mx. Harrison, “Or will that be too distracting?”

“Mmm.” The Antichrist tapped at his chin with a dirty finger. “Yes, please. As long as it’s not boring old people music.”

Mx. Harrison was theoretically against the ‘please’, but they could let it slide, greased by the satisfaction that their counterpart’s influence hadn’t extended to appreciation for Liszt and the like. They connected their phone to a little wireless speaker and started a Rammstein album from their illegally downloaded collection. None of it was censored and all of it was of studio quality. 

Warlock screwed up his face. “This sounds weird. Is this Engish?”

“They’re singing in German,” said Mx. Harrison, settling back in their seat.

“Sounds weird,” the Antichrist repeated. He scrawled out a few more sums. His penmanship was atrocious, which was to be expected. Their counterpart could take care of that lesson. _ His _ handwriting was flawless.

“Would you like to learn what they’re saying?” They watched carefully with more than eyes, looking for the moment when Warlock’s powers might shimmer through. The boy was getting on in world-destructing years and had shown precious little intent before. The intent was the important thing. If he _ wanted_, he could do as he liked, and his powers would help him.

“Not really,” said Warlock. He doodled a bird in the margin of his paper. “It sounds like they’re going to be sick.”

Mx. Harrison pursed their lips to keep from laughing. English, to them, who had learned as many languages as humans had dreamed, sounded like someone going to be sick in a second-chair tuba at a military rally as run by hippies. And it had been born from German.

“Are there any other languages you’d like to learn? Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, Cantonese?” they listed from the top of their head, eyebrows raised for an answer and lesson planner open for posterity's sake.

Warlock doodled something vaguely canine. “Do I have to?”

“I’m asking what you would _ like _ to do,” they said, perfectly reasonable.

“Dunno.” Warlock finally looked up, still shy with the ‘new’ adult. “It’s an awful lot of work, ain’t it? Learning how to talk different.”

Mx. Harrison chewed briefly on their lip. “It doesn’t have to be,” they said, cautiously casual. “There’s all sorts of ways to learn. I’m here to help you do that, so, if you’d like…”

They trailed off. Warlock finish the maths primer and pushed it aside. 

“Nah,” he said, worrying at his pencil with both hands. “I don’t like German.”

Mx. Harrison, still watching with more than eyes, bit back their frustration. Warlock didn’t have a hint of desire or intent - the sort that might spark his supernatural powers - but he _ was _ looking up with his head down, waiting for rebuke. Mx. Harrison might have memories of fondness for the boy, but to him, they were still a stranger. He was testing the interaction for any hint of cracks.

Outside the schoolroom in a room nearby, someone raised their voice even louder than the music. Something vaguely plate-like crashed.

Warlock and Mx. Harrison both winced.

“Why don’t we work on the language primer next,” said Mx. Harrison, turning up the volume on their little speaker. “And once we have the basics down, we can think more on expanding that to include other things.”

It was an order phrased as a request. Warlock went along with it, but didn’t appreciate the subtleties of the communication lesson. He was bored by the idea of oration as a means of manipulation, fiddling with scraps of paper and requesting different music, despite gentle attempts to gain his attention. He wasn’t even willing to try a spot of rabble-rousing. He found the wording confusing. Mx. Harrison had examples from history’s greatest orators on their lesson planner, but Warlock couldn’t get past Caesar’s funny name, let alone try to read his speeches with the proper intonations. 

When a second item crashed - causing Mx. Harrison to stutter, annoyed - Warlock asked to go to his room.

“They’re not gonna stop,” the boy said, red flags of frustration high on his cheeks even as he swung his legs with a determined nonchalant attitude.

“Why are they arguing?” the words said from Mx. Harrison’s mouth before their probable brain could catch up. It was an idiotic question to ask a child, even this one.

Especially since he answered with a child’s honesty, “Dad don’t like Mom wearing yoga pants. He says they’re slutty.”

Rage bloomed high in Mx. Harrison’s lungs, a sudden reminder of the meat they carried in their human seeming. To them, meat was meat, but it had the disconcerting propensity for being a tinderbox at the most inopportune moments. 

“Is that something he said to you?” they asked, blunting the edge of their anger in front of their pupil. A tutor was cool and calm, seeking to nurture and nudge in the right direction.

“Nooo…” Warlock drew out, kicking harder now. The imitation school chair would have moved if it wasn’t for the carpet.

“Do you know what it means?”

“Not really,” he mumbled, brow furrowed as he tried to puzzle it out. 

“Were you eavesdropping?”

Warlock didn’t say anything to that, but kept looking up at Mx. Harrison, wary and mulish.

“Hm,” they hummed in an appropriately neutral manner. They shuffled the speeches into their planner and shut it away. The boy took it as a sign of the day’s end; he relaxed, just a bit.

“Can I go?”

“Do you _ like _ to eavesdrop, Warlock?” they asked rather than answer. A good tutor asked many questions and gave the student a chance to learn themselves. 

“It’s not polite to listen in on people,” he said instantly, stilling his feet against the legs of the chair.

“It’s not,” Mx. Harrison agreed. “It’s a good avenue of information and most people like to have strong control of those avenues. And when they catch you at them, they call it ‘impolite’ or ‘illegal’ or ‘punishable by death’ to keep other curious people away, right before they punish _ you _ as an example.”

Warlock watched them with big eyes, enraptured by the curiosity of a child presented with the rare sight of an honest adult.

“Would you like to show me where you eavesdrop?” they asked.

It turned out to be deceptively easy, especially if you were a child. All of the rooms on the ground floor were for receiving and socializing. The first floor had more private-social rooms, while the second held family rooms. The attic was what servants would use to sleep, though that was rare now, with most of the staff able to afford their own lodgings. The nanny - when there was a nanny - had slept on the same floor as the family.

All these floors and passages meant there were more connections than lumbering adults could dream. Warlock, in a surprising display of inquisitiveness, had found some vents that allowed one to easily listen in on different rooms, if one was careful. There was a vent on the attic floor that gave a tinny rendition of what was happening in the family living room. Warlock and Mx. Harrison lay on their stomachs in order to listen, mouths pressed against crossed arms to stifle noisy breathing. Not that their marks would have heard either of them. They were too busy yelling at each other.

“-- just be quiet, for once in your life?” Mr. Dowling said at a raised volume.

“_Fuck _ your quiet,” said Mrs. Dowling at the same volume, as far from the doubtful creature that confided in the nanny as the sun was from the earth. “You’re just going to let that, that, that slavering _ idiot _ talk like that about me?”

“_I _didn’t hear him-” 

“No, of course not, you never do!”

“- and it’s not like I can go up to him like, hey, Mark, don’t look at my wife’s totally inappropriate clothing -”

“_That is not the point. _”

“Then what _ is _ the point, honey?”

“Do _ not _ ‘honey’ me right now, Tad!”

“Fine. Then what is the point, _ vinegar_?”

Mx. Harrison laughed into their sleeve, caught off guard. Warlock looked to them in confusion. They mimed behind them and started scooting backwards. The boy was quick to catch on.

“How often do you do this?”

Warlock, still lying down, shrugged and brushed his hair out of his eyes. Mr. Dowling had been threatening to go at it with clippers, the tutor knew. It was something that the cook had told them. He was more than ready to gossip about the household to a sympathetic ear, especially when the person attached to that ear was so quick to compliment his skill.

“They shout a lot,” the boy said. “Sometimes I listen, like when they’re shouting about other people. I don’t repeat it, though. They say a lot of bad words and it gets me in trouble.”

“What kind of words?”

Warlock rattled them off. 

“Interesting.” The parents had been creative as only Americans could. “Do you know how to use those words?”

Warlock gave them an incredulous look. “I just said them.”

Mx. Harrison tapped painted nails on the wood floor, a quick quarter beat. This could be more effective than Caesar. 

“Bad words can be used like any other word,” they said, propping up by the elbows. “But if they aren’t used effectively, it can ruin the entire intention.”

“What’s ‘intention’?”

“The goal, the plan. What one _ means _ to do. How would you _ intend _ to use bad words?”

Warlock glanced at the old vent.

“To… hurt people?” he guessed. 

Mx. Harrison didn't have a heart most of the time, but if it were around, it would have had itself a bit of a weep. That was why they didn't usually keep it around.

“A sufficient reason,” they said, even and tempered against the unfairness of the world. “But not the only one. What else?”

“To, to, to…” Warlock pressed tight fists against his cheeks, an effort to make thinking happen at a pace that suited him. “Oh! To make someone laugh!”

“The basis for that hypothesis being?”

“What?”

“Your reason why it would make someone laugh?”

“Oh. I heard Harry-” Warlock named one of the American guards. “-say that it was _ pissing _ rain and there was a delivery guy, and he laughed about it, but I said _ piss _ later and Mom told me never to say it again, and _ Dad _ said what if I was _ taking _ the piss and Mom got mad at _ him_, so it’s still a bad word, right?”

“A word can have many meanings to many people,” said Mx. Harrison, tamping down their amusement at the small recitation. “That’s a good example. Words have power, good and bad and all the rest, and if they are used effectively, they can change the way people look at you.”

“Like Harry?” He answered Mx. Harrison’s question before it was spoken. “Harry likes the delivery guy. They talk a lot, when he brings stuff. And Harry tells him jokes to make him laugh.”

“Then yes. Like Harry. A word that makes the delivery man laugh will make your mother angry, or your father witty. It’s all in how it’s used.”

“Huh,” huffed the Antichrist. He traced a floorboard with a fingernail, chin propped on his other hand. The tiny cogs of brain cells worked behind his eyes, calculating this new information. 

There were three grandfather clocks in the house, one on each floor (but the attic). They chimed the new hour in an unerring unison, thrumming through the boards beneath the duo’s stomachs.

Mx. Harrison shifted to stand on their feet, dusting off the front of their tutor-appropriate tweed outfit. It was a genuinely purchased outfit, which rankled them to no end, but it was easier than constantly trying to keep up the idea of what a tutor might wear. And it had been on _ his _ dime. Which barely counted. Even if it had been a lengthy quest at the shops. And a pleasant dinner afterwards.

They shook off the memory. They were a tutor now, not a… Supernatural being in an Arrangement with another supernatural being.

“That’s enough for the day,” they said as Warlock clambered upright. “On Thursday, we’ll revisit our communication lesson. Perhaps think on the power of words between the now and then.”

The parents hadn’t stopped arguing with the chiming of the hour, but their words had slowed and stuttered. Mx. Harrison could still hear them, but Warlock likely couldn’t. They knew that. Still, they were unnerved to see Warlock watching the vent, his brow pinched with internal trouble.

Mx. Harrison hated internal trouble. It could go so many ways, and all of it was higher than their pay grade. Metaphorically. Seeing as they had never really been paid. There was no Demon of Payroll, after all.

“Well,” they said with tutorly patience. “What is it?”

“What if…”

Mx. Harrison waited, hands clasped behind their back. Something was curling smoke-like around Warlock. It was a bare shimmer to their nose, just enough to be interesting.

“Could there be something, could I,” he fumbled, “say something that would make them…”

He trailed off with a furrowed brow, looking at the vent again. The arguing had stopped. Mx. Harrison stretched their hearing to note the brushing up of demolished porcelain. It was unlikely to be a Dowling, based on the pointed human silence alone. Mrs. Dowling didn't clean things in front of her husband, and Mr. Dowling didn't clean at all.

Mx. Harrison sighed and rubbed at their chin, faint stubble rasping against pencil-calloused fingers.

The plan was to influence evil, but he was still so _ young_. It was harder to remember he would end the world - possibly, maybe - with each year that he grew and stayed so small.

“Warlock, you are a child,” they said with a feather's softness. When he wouldn't meet their gaze, they knelt instead, the better to be even. “None of this, what your parents do, none of that is your responsibility. It's _ their _ responsibility to care for _ you _. Not the other way around.”

“But what if,” he countered, chin mulish against trembling tears. “Maybe if I say the right thing, they'll, they'll get along, and stop-” 

He broke off with a shuddering gasp, snapping his teeth shut against the cry that wanted out. He wanted it with a passion, but the _ intent _ was lacking. There was just the bewilderment of the young who had no true control of their life.

“Oh, dearie,” said Mx. Harrison, just as overwhelmed. What had they missed, between the weeks of one being to the next seeming? Warlock hadn't hesitated to cry when his nanny was still there.

Meat was meat, and it could be conditioned beyond what the brain knew. Mx. Harrison folded Warlock into a hug.

The boy felt like a log at first, still fighting his tears, before falling into the fold, hot face pressed against the tutor's shoulder. When he did cry, it was silent. That unnerved Mx. Harrison the most. Since when did Warlock not share what he was _ feeling_?

“I'm a big boy,” he said, the words trembling as they fell against tweed. “Big boys don't cry.”

There was the tinderbox feeling again. My, but He was being particularly cruel when He made _ that _ one up. It was accompanied by a desire to smash cities, but for the small boy in their arms.

“Well, I'm bigger than you, and I cry,” they said, patting his back with ruthless gentility.

Warlock sniffled. “Do you?”

“All the time,” they lightly lied. After six thousand years, the odds were stacked against actual time spent crying, but that didn't need explained.

He sniffled again. “You're a boy?”

“Not really.”

“A girl?”

“Nah.”

“Oh. Cool.” Warlock, showing good manners appropriate for his age, kindly did not blow snot onto Mx. Harrison's jacket. He let go and used his own sleeve instead. 

Mx. Harrison pulled out their pocket square, which was suddenly nose-friendly cotton, and handed it over for a more thorough face cleaning. Warlock got in a few wipes and handed it back. Between standing up and neatening hems, it miraculously disappeared. 

(Easier than washing, and _ he _ had bought an astounding amount of pocket squares anyway.)

“Alright?” they asked, feeling it insufficient. But what else could they say? They were theoretically new here. There would be no rocking chairs and whispered lullabies for children. No small ‘kindnesses’ that went unremarked by those Below, given the ultimate goal of nurturing an occult being towards evil. It wasn’t allowed.

“Alright,” the boy promised, wiping his eyes again with both wrists. "Mx. Harrison, can you keep a secret?”

“I'll never tell.”

Warlock squinted, trying to determine if they were joking. They showed their best serious face.

He giggled at the melodramatic contortion. It was watery, but it was real.

“You remind me of someone that used to be here,” he told them, heading towards the stairs. 

Mx. Harrison followed, hiding their concern with a brisk pace. They had been careful, when idly taking this seeming, not to appear too much like the old one. They thought it had gone well, given not a single person had blinked an eye to see them during the interview process. The cook hadn't even offered any of his specialty tarts yet, and he had gifted those to the nanny after three days.

“Someone in the household?” they asked, managing curiosity over panic.

“Not really,” he said with a shrug. “He was really nice and knew a lot of big words and he was a gardener, so Dad didn't like it when I played out there too much, but the gardener taught me how to ride a bike, so it turned out okay.”

Mx. Harrison didn't know what part to react to first. They were better at comforting hugs - though it shouldn’t be said - than knowing how to deflect after being compared to, well. A not-friend. A not-enemy. A companion.

They had to say _ something_. Warlock was giving them that testing look again, waiting for them to be like the other adults in his young and soon-to-be terribly short life. And they couldn't allow that. 

“He sounds… interesting.” Mx. Harrison slowed to a stop at the bottom of the staircase. It being the one that led up to the attic, it was tucked away in a discreet corridor that remained undusty only for the hard work of the staff. 

“I miss him,” the child said with perfect honesty. He stared at the carpet, hands clenched in a spasm of remembering. “I miss him a lot.”

Before they could find a proper reply, Warlock waved goodbye and ran to go to his room. His pounding steps didn’t bring any parental condemnation. The two must be on a different floor, or had left the residence entirely in order to cool off.

That had been the real secret, Mx. Harrison could tell. They tucked it away, close to where their heart might have been.

Mx. Harrison went to the new schoolroom to collect their materials for the bus ride back to the flat. Warlock lacked proper _ intent _ with his powers, that much was clear, but there was still time yet. It could be that the tutor was being hasty. He was troubled and beset with the strange worries that cropped up around humans and their various struggles. How could anyone concentrate on Caesar when there were more immediate problems in the way?

Mx. Harrison hadn’t been a demon as long as they had without understanding that true evil took a long time to coordinate. There were years to go. Maybe even longer than eleven years, if the job was done well.

If some part of them was disquieted by the boy’s current role in life, that was only because _ he _ had Wednesday tutoring before them, and that just meant more effort spent erasing the influence of good. Just that. Nothing more.

### 4.

The garden had been nice, but this seeming felt more suited to Mr. Cortese’s natural inclinations. He had been hired before his counterpart - a fact that went smugly unremarked - based solely on his ability to wax poetic on the virtues of various historical figures. Somewhat poetic. He had seen a portrait of former US president Lincoln in the sitting room and cheerfully spoke on _ one _ of the previous assassination attempts before The Big One, and the Dowlings had been appropriately impressed.

Appropriately impressed, at least, as long as he didn’t mention the aftermath of that stunt. It was astounding, what lengths cartoonists would go to lambaste a fellow for being concerned about a little thing like presidential murder. (But, he supposed, it was only in their nurture.)

That was the only time the Dowlings had been interested in what the tutor had said, as far as Mr. Cortese could tell. Once the tutors had been hired, the two were practically neglected by their bosses. It was disappointing, as Mr. Cortese often said while sharing bottles of end-of-week wine with his counterpart. He really expected better of them. Education was important. He was a tutor, for goodness’ sake, as stated by his impressive and varied curriculum vitae! Most of which was even true, with a few dates fudged here and there. He should know!

But in the years that he spent knowing as he should, the parents hardly seemed to notice. Their lack of notice had led him to suppose that in the end, it was what was best for the child that was most important. (As much as he might grumble about it in the privacy of the flat that _ they _ did not share with him, so much as occupy at the same time.)

He especially tried to remember this importance on days when the Antichrist seemed determined to fiddle-faddle about rather than pay attention. Not that Mr. Cortese could fully blame him. Today was a promising beginning to a _ beautiful _ summer. It was quite possibly the last to ever be enjoyed.

“Mom said I could go play when I was done with my homework, and I’ve done it,” said Warlock, speaking to the window rather than his tutor. The garden wasn’t the same as it once was, but it was still full of adventuring spaces to invitingly tempt idleness. “Can I go?”

“You have only done the mathematics,” Mr. Cortese chided, flipping through papers. “What of this book essay? It has yet to be started.” 

It wasn’t a book that might inspire interest, unfortunately. The novella was something child-like in historical fiction, meant to be inane from the author’s perspective, but everyone had to start somewhere. The author would improve with practice, and then perhaps produce something that Mr. Cortese might virtuously enjoy. With a few less anachronisms. 

Warlock wasn’t having it. “The book sucked.”

“That is not an essay.”

“How am I going to drag out that a book sucked for an entire page?” the Antichrist whined. He was approaching the Big Day and hadn’t shown any bright flashes of goodness yet, but he was very adept at petulance. It was a particular human trait that seemed to be innate rather than learned.

Mr. Cortese frowned at the assignment from one of Warlock’s school teachers, reading glasses firmly in danger at the end of his nose. He could never decide what looked most appropriate for this seeming. Today, they were rimless with golden and etched wire arms. The etching resembled twinned snakes; they had been a somewhat humorous gift. 

“I have the reading of this as a page and a half,” he said, setting the assignment back down on the table.

“Ugh!” Warlock let his forehead thunk against the glass, shoulders slumped. Mr. Cortese had been around for a few beautiful summers. He knew all the signs of academic despair.

“Are you having the feeling of ‘antsy’?” asked the tutor.

“Hrnk.” Warlock flopped to sit on the deep windowsill, play-acting as dead by boredom.

“I see.” Mr. Cortese folded his glasses and tucked them away in a breast pocket. “The room, it grows stuffy. Shall we have a walk?”

“Fine,” he grumbled, slipping free of the windowsill with all the reluctance of a cat dragged to a bath.

Once actually outside, he seemed to cheer in the breeze. Mr. Cortese led the two along garden paths, chatting about this or that in a Continental fashion. He kept the pace brisk. Warlock, with his shorter legs, was paying more attention to matching it rather than maintaining his own irritation. Exercise was a good distraction when someone was irritated enough to pull out hair, one that Mr. Cortese had employed on a number of occasions. He had practice.

As usual on these stretching walks, Warlock ignored what the tutor was saying in favor of brief breaks to examine some new growing thing or creature. Somehow, the tutor managed to be distracted at those same moments, listening to birdsong. 

Birds were always so chatty. _ Someone _ had to listen to all that gossip.

They circled the garden twice before returning to the paved promenade that served as a glorified back porch.

“Are we still having of antsy?” asked Mr. Cortese.

Warlock shook the fringe out of his eyes. “Not really.”

“Then shall we get to the essay?” Mr. Cortese kept his eyes on the treeline, but his ears were open. It had been a longer-than-usual decade, with those ears often open. He was waiting for the crystalline signal of something other than the boy’s occult destiny to chime. It had to happen eventually. Despite the words of some of Mr. Cortese’s better-not-mentioned colleagues, he held a great deal of hope as to the effectiveness of his work.

“I don’t know what to say,” Warlock mumbled. He scrubbed as his nose with his sleeve.

“Hmm.” Mr. Cortese glanced around the promenade. It was empty around this time of day, but it was good to be certain. “Would you like to stand on your hands?”

“What? I don’t know how to do that. Do you know how to do that?” the boy said, bouncing on his feet with suspicion and curiosity. The tutor had all the athletic appearance of a professionally baked muffin. Muffins couldn’t do handstands. 

“The brain, it is an organ that needs stimulation to work as one needs,” said Mr. Cortese. He took off his suit jacket and laid it over a nearby balustrade, leaving his glasses on top. “Sometimes, all the stimulation needed is a change of perspective.”

Mr. Cortese took a step forward, stretched his arms towards the ground, and kicked himself up into a handstand.

Children loved this sort of thing, he knew. Something about how they needed to bounce around in order to gain equilibrium in their growing bodies. For himself, it was strange and not so strange. Mr. Cortese was used to flying in any number of ways. His human seeming was not used to being above the ground by a few floors, and never upside-down. He just had to gain his own equilibrium between the two.

He managed to ‘walk’ a few steps before Warlock’s exclamations turned back into words. Mr. Cortese let one leg fall back towards the ground so that he may get to his feet. He rose, dusting off his hands, as Warlock jumped in place, overwhelmed with excitement.

“You can walk on your hands!” he yelled. “That’s so cool! Teach me to do it!”

“But first, here is how the cards lay,” said Mr. Cortese, fetching his jacket and glasses, ready for negotiation. It was terribly easy to slip back into old habits, no matter the seeming. There had been years of speaking calmly to a small boy that wanted to climb trees before understanding how to get back down, after all. 

He held up a hand for attention before continuing, “We go out onto the grass and I teach you how to handstand. We change our perspective and _ then _ we discuss the essay.”

“Teach me!” Warlock demanded.

“Do you agree to the cards?” the tutor rejoined, stern as stone.

“Yes,” he lied, loud and vehement. He ran back down the steps to the lawn proper.

Mr. Cortese followed. He wouldn’t scold the boy. He was a tutor now. That meant teaching to understand as much as to know. It required delicacy.

Some of that delicacy was spent encouraging Warlock to overcome his fear of tumbling. He wanted to do it exactly as the tutor had done, but kept letting his legs drop a moment too soon and settling into an increasingly disgruntled crouch. He could have been another frog statue among the prettily maintained plants, if not for his scowl.

“This is stupid,” he complained. “What am I doing wrong?”

“There are other ways to get to a handstand,” Mr. Cortese said as patient as a gouache-rendered saint. “Let us get close to that wall and we can try there.”

“I want to do it like _ you _ did it,” the boy huffed, brushing grass from his jeans. He rolled his shoulders and stood with his arms straight in the air. Carefully, he leaned closer to the ground, forming a ‘T’ with an outstretched leg and torso.

Mr. Cortese watched as Warlock got as far as propping himself up like an odd-legged tripod. He couldn’t kick himself upwards from that position.

He crumpled onto the grass, tearing up handfuls in frustration.

“Why do you not like the book, Warlock?” asked Mr. Cortese. If the boy was distracted, he could be led into a different conversation. If the tutor was careful. And very persistent.

“‘Cause it sucks,” Warlock gritted, getting back to his feet.

“Tell me how. I go to buy this book, what would you tell me so that I do not buy?”

“I already have a copy. Do you want it? Take it.” He stuck out his arms once more, eyes nearly shut in anticipation of the action. “Saves me from having to read it ever again.”

He went for it. He got his legs up this time, long enough that Mr. Cortese stuck out an anticipatory arm should he overbalance onto his back, but Warlock dropped to both feet instead.

“As you read it, what part was so terrible?”

Warlock briefly hugged his knees, glaring at the ground.

“Everyone talked weird," he said. "Not even like old people weird, but just saying stuff stupid so it doesn't make sense, and they were so mean to the kid, like, _all_ the time. And I hate reading books where the kid’s dad is gone. They’re _ always _ gone.”

He got up to try again as Mr. Cortese cast his mind back to the story. It had been read to ‘cover all the bases’, if he remembered that phrase correctly, but it hadn’t been anything special. As far as he was aware, the father was a present figure throughout the poorly rendered child’s drama. Stern and distant, ready to turn the spotlight on a person if they were found lacking, but rarely sticking around beyond the stammered excuses. He hadn’t liked the father figure either.

“Is this something you observe in many books?” Mr. Cortese asked. His own observations weren’t important here. He had a job to do.

Warlock, trying the tripod with a wider stance, twisted just enough to give him an unimpressed look.

“Well, yeah,” he scoffed. “They’re busy or gone and the moms are all fake and mean-” 

He cut himself off as he tried a kick. Mr. Cortese stuck out a pre-emptory arm, but the boy fell back down, landing mostly on his right knee. Warlock cried out; it was the pain of failure rather than of the body. He was too old for tantrums and the lawn was kept clear of rocks that could have been thrown. He had to settle for pounding his fists on his thighs, a smashing drum of disappointment.

“I can’t do this!” he exclaimed.

Mr. Cortese sat next to him on the grass, tailor neat. His trousers knew better than to get stained from the contact.

“It took me many tries before I could do it,” he told the boy, wielding somewhat-honesty like an open offering. “Many, many, _ many _ tries. I fell so much, my friend said that I was better off laying on the ground to save the trip.”

“Hmph.” Warlock propped his elbows on his knees. “Then why do it at all?”

“I did it wrong so many times, I learned how _ not _ to do it.” Mr. Cortese didn’t shrug, it not being academic to shrug. He made an encompassing gesture instead. “Then I did it right. Eventually.”

“That sounds like forever.”

“Eventually is not at all close to forever.” He should know. He had been there for all of forever.

“Still sounds like it.” Warlock cast himself back on the lawn with a sigh. Between the attempts and the garden walk, he was sweaty and dirt-streaked. His parents would be upset about that, if they saw him.

The two contemplated the sky.

“Dad says I should go to school in America,” said Warlock.

“Ah.” That was new information to Mr. Cortese. He needed to work on his household gossip. He plucked a polishing cloth and glasses from their separate pockets. “What do you think about it?”

“Why do I have to think about it? It’s not like I can say ‘no’.”

Mr. Cortese looked over at the boy, a worried frown ready to bloom. As he had grown, he had slipped into an odd sort of cynicism. It may not have been recognizable to the young men of that original Grecian club, but meanings changed after a few dozen centuries. This was the cynicism of a youth who knew what control he had in life and found it lacking.

It was virtuous to follow the directive of one’s parents. Mr. Cortese could also see that it wouldn’t do the boy much good to follow that path blindly.

He had been an angel since the beginning of paths, after all. He was predisposed to seeking those with goodness in them.

“Has this been discussed with your parents?” asked Mr. Cortese.

“Discussed how?”

“Have you spoken to them?”

“Oh. Not really.” Warlock pulled up a scant handful of grass and threw it in the air. Most fell back on his face. “Dad just said I need the American experience of middle school instead of going into secondary school here. He already don’t like how I talk sometimes.”

“Ah. Too cosmopolitan.”

“What’s magazines got to do with it?”

“Too varied and learned,” he defined, deliberately not noticing Warlock’s baiting smile. It was mischief in lieu of his internal turmoil and so should not be indulged. “As arrived from different cultures. What of your mother?”

“She doesn’t care,” he grumbled. “She never does.” 

He threw more grass. A blade went up his nose. He sneezed it back out.

Mr. Cortese folded his hands over his stomach, tapping his thumbs together in thought. The world may or may not end after the Antichrist’s fast-approaching eleventh birthday. Would it matter to console him now? Or rather, could he allow himself _ not _ to console the boy for whom he had cared for a decade? That was a far better question, one that had an answer.

“Warlock, you are very young,” said Mr. Cortese, firm in his belief of the boy’s potential. “Your parents, they have the choosing of these things because they are responsible for you. But you can and must consider them for yourself. What is it that _ you _ want?”

He sat up, trying to wipe sticky green blood away on his jeans. 

“I _ don’t _ want to leave my friends. And I don’t want to go to some stupid American school.” 

He stopped, glaring at the middle distance. Something worked behind his eyes. It was a tremulous shifting, the sort that Mr. Cortese knew could fall in any number of ways. They were an incredibly delicate operation to manage, if one didn’t believe in the inherent goodness of people to fall exactly as they should.

Mr. Cortese gave him a moment before gently prompting, “Sometimes we start at what we do not desire, and so arrive at what we desire.”

Warlock snorted.

“It hasn’t occurred to you yet, has it?” he asked, scrubbing harder on his jeans.

“Many things occur to me. To which do you refer?”

“If I go to school in America, you won’t be tutoring me anymore. Not you _ or _ Mx. Harrison,” said Warlock. “You’ll have to leave.”

His face tightened against a childish urge to cry. He was nearly eleven and had been told several times by various people (but, notably, not by certain individuals) that crying was reserved for serious things. It wasn’t for passing nuisances. 

It was enough to break an angel’s heart, if an angel had one. 

Before the tutor could fish the right words from his throat, Warlock rolled to his feet.

“I want to do a handstand,” he said, brow drawn down with determination. He stuck out his arms. Mr. Cortese did not sigh - as obvious deflections did not call for academic sighs - and got to his feet as well. He had patience. He had patience as to inspire people to tortured sainthood, let alone himself.

Warlock got it on the fourth try. He stayed on his hands with legs in the air for nearly a full half second, before wobbling dangerously. Mr. Cortese, in his role as a spotter, helped mitigate the resulting fall into more of a slow tumble. It was enough to give him palpitations, but Warlock was exultant. 

“Holy shit, I did it!” he cried, scrambling upright. 

“Now, there is no need for this language-” Mr. Cortese began to admonish.

Warlock threw his arms around the tutor in a hug. It startled them both. Embarrassment at the affection - affection being rarely encouraged by others in the young boy’s life - chased him back into position, arms raised to try again.

He did it thrice more before Mr. Cortese said (politely, of course) that it was time to go inside and finish the waiting work.

“We do not have to create an entire essay today,” said Mr. Cortese, checking that his glasses were in his pocket. “I ask that we make of an outline, so as to have goals for the paper itself.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Warlock, already hundreds of cubits away in his mind. He went up the steps, too tired to take them two at a time as he usually attempted to do.

“Warlock.”

The boy paused at the top. The steps were short, but so was he; it left him even to meet Mr. Cortese’s gaze. 

“If I am to be doing my humble job well,” the tutor said carefully. “You will have the skills to make many decisions in your life. It is important to think, what do _ you _ want, and what for which are you willing to work?”

Of course, he knew what he _ wanted _ the Antichrist to desire, but he was still only somewhat mortal. He had to make the choice himself. Eventually. And perhaps with quite a few lessons about patience and kindness in his history.

Warlock chewed on his lip, regarding the tutor with narrowed eyes.

“You talk like my old nanny,” he said.

Mr. Cortese blinked in surprise.

“She used to ask what I think all the time, and she was even foreign, too, kind of.” He looked down at the stone steps, face slowly flushing. “She was nice. I miss her.”

That proved too much honesty for a young boy rapidly growing out of that child’s trait. He turned and ran into the residence.

When Mr. Cortese would go to the schoolroom, he would find Warlock glaringly missing. He neatened their work area and collected his own things to go back to the flat. They could revisit the essay later. More troubling things brewed in the self that Mr. Cortese kept hidden while on the job. He had spent many years as a tutor, and years before that as a gardener. The boy was determined and persistent, but he didn’t have the sheen of goodness that would counteract his occult nature. He also didn’t have _much_ of an occult nature.

After all, occult nature didn’t allow for joyful hugs. Ethereal influence didn’t allow for questioning of authority, either.

He and his counterpart had collectively flipped a coin on this mission.

It was the final summer, and time had yet to show where the coin would fall.


	3. First, Catch your Rabbit

###  5.

Despite weeks of moping after the dismissal of his two favourite staff members, the birthday boy enjoyed his party immensely. The ever-present American guards were less pleased at discovering their weapons had been turned into water pistols, but given other options, they really ought to have been grateful at the change. The supersoakers found at child-height, the basket of water balloons half-hidden under a bush, and the perfect lobbing-sized cupcakes were just a cherry on top. The actual cherries - which had been there previously through no miraculous circumstances - were eaten by the children as they played. Cherry pits were excellent small missiles, especially when spat expertly at others.

Adults, of course, rarely appreciated such things. That was the main problem with them, if you asked any child there.

The enjoyable chaos was loud enough to carry over the back garden and into the secluded car park where staff and hired workers placed their less-than-upper-class vehicles. There, a caterer and a magician sat inside a 1933 Bentley coupe, both staring forward through the windshield. The caterer was spotless. The magician had stood in the way of several lobbed cupcakes, as well as a few of the less appetizing hors d’oeuvre. The Bentley alone cared about the upholstery. Both person-shaped beings were too distracted to think of it.

Pale and wan in a distinctly unfashionable manner, the caterer held onto the steering wheel as though it could provide any sort of guidance as what to do next. He was thinking of countless moments of tenderness and guidance. At the time, it had seemed necessary - even nice. (Though one would be better off to shut their brain before saying as much.) Now, all that was apparent was the normalcy of it. The simple _ lack _ of power beyond what a tantrum and a whine might accomplish. It was glaring, the metaphorical signs in the literal rear-view mirror, which only held rustling bushes as children started forming factions in their imaginative war.

It had been so evident, and he had missed it entirely.

Next to him, greasepaint mustache only slightly smudged from nervous sweat, the magician sat with hands tightly clasped and mind on endless times of comfort and solace. It was hard to regret either, given his nature, but the abject terror of failure hung sharply overhead. He had spent years in a self-imposed mission, talked it up to colleagues and irritating minders, and he had missed all of the signals that this was a completely normal child. Neither evil or good, but made up of both. Wholly human, belonging entirely to the throngs of screaming warriors that resisted corralling with bloody-minded fervor.

He was a being made of hope, and it had been misplaced.

Neither knew what to do. Where was the real Antichrist?

Without a real Plan for the moment, the two sat alone together, afraid to further voice their worries to the only other person on the planet that might understand. Each stared forward because to look at the other would be to break.

“Are we going to leave?” said the magician with a thin brittleness that could have been irritation, if one listened with the wrong ears.

“Yeah, hang on,” muttered the caterer. He didn't turn the ignition. His expression was akin to aggravation, if not for desolation of his hidden eyes.

Hands squeezed a steering wheel in a wordless prayer.

Hands clasped together for want to enfold a familiar set.

It was a Monday, it was six days before the end of the world, and they and everyone else were surely doomed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started as a "wouldn't it be nice" thought experiment and turned into something far different. With a failed-step-one joke. Ha ha.
> 
> The assassination thing was [the Baltimore Plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Plot). The novella was just an imagined irritation I have with reading books where the author clearly does not think well of kids. 
> 
> This is still an entirely GO book fanfic, with a few visual liberties taken from the show. (Such as the Bentley. I liked the look of the '33 Bentley.)


End file.
